You are in the process of growing your company. And in doing so, it’s unavoidable that you’ll face a range of challenges along the way. Whether you run a service-based business, sell products online, or operate a traditional brick and mortar company, there are particular small business obstacles that every owner must face at one time or another.

Recognizing common drawbacks associated with growth and overcoming them are crucial if your business is to continue to grow and thrive. The following are some the challenges of growing a business and how to meet them:

Keeping Up with the Market

In order to stay ahead of the competition, your small business must create a customer-centric marketing plan that’s continually strengthening your relationship with your target market. One of the best ways to do this is through email and social media marketing with companies like 915IT.

915IT helps you reach out to customers with fresh content and engage them via social media, so that you will stay ahead of the competition.

Scaling and Staffing

As your business grows, there’s nothing more important than finding a great team. Staffing your company with dedicated talent is one of the quickest ways to make sure you’re growing in the right direction.

Planning Ahead

The plans that worked for you a year ago may no longer work for you today. Market conditions continually change, so you need to update your business plans regularly. As your business grows, your strategy needs to adapt to suit your changed circumstances.

At the same time, every business needs to be open for new opportunities. There are obvious risks to depending solely on existing clients. Expanding and branching out your customer base spreads those risks.

Cash Flow and Financial Management

One of the most important aspects of running a small business is keeping track of the money you make – how it’s spent, where it’s coming from, and where it’s going.

Every element of the working capital should be carefully supervised to maximize your free cash flow. Effective credit management and tight management of overdue debts are also important. You may also want to consider raising financing against trade debts.

Planning ahead helps you anticipate your financing needs and arrange suitable funding. For many growing businesses, a key decision is whether to bring in outside investors to provide the equity needed to underpin further expansion.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a helpful tool that could give you a higher ranking in Google if you truly master it. Unfortunately, not all SEO campaigns will give you the best results. You’ll have to know how it works and familiarize yourself with relevant things such as keyword research.

However, you don’t need to spend time on seminars or even read tons of books just to take advantage of SEO. All you have to do is focus on your searches, because that is the easiest way to get better at SEO. This includes remembering everything you’ve learned about searching and avoid committing the most basic errors.

Here’s how you can improve your SEO without having to go through great lengths. First, think of something to research that is not in your niche or industry. Make sure that it isn’t too close to what your business is so that you can get an analytical perspective of things. Then answer the following questions:

How do you search for something? As a searcher, the keywords you use might not be the same as what you target as a marketer. Think of your search phrases. Are they targeting high-traffic, high-volume keywords like what you do as a marketer, or did you search for something using longer, more specific keywords and phrases? When aiming for good SEO, try to think like a customer so that you can provide them what they need where they would look for it.

Why do you click on something? The reason why SEO is important is because it helps you rank higher on Google, which will in turn bring more traffic to your site. However, this is not the only reason why people click on your links. A good domain name might do the trick. Another is a good meta description. Consider these things and change where necessary so that people will click on links for your website.

What’s in a website that makes you stay instead of just going back to Google? If you’ve already gotten customers clicking on your site, the next task for you is trying to make them stay. Ask yourself what gets you interested in a website and why you are hanging around. Does a good navigation help? What about good content and internal links that help you go from one topic to a related one? Is the organization of data important? Apply these into your own website and even improve on these so that you come up with an interesting website people would want to visit and stay on.

Did you want to act on something after reading or seeing something from the website? Visiting websites often don’t just end with you closing the browser. If you’ve encountered a good website offering something you want or need, and if their call to action is encouraging, you might be clicking on a button for a purchase sooner than you realize. Now think on how that happened. What exactly did the website give you that wanted you to act on a purchase? If you’ve been given enough information and have been assured of a company’s credibility and trustworthiness, you will probably find yourself ready to move forward. Now ask yourself if your website is already offering enough data about what you are offering and appeasing your clients’ questions enough so that they don’t hesitate to click.

Being a marketer may be different from being a searcher, but if you consider it, the two should be considered if you want your business to take off the ground. After all, your website will be aiming to get the full attention of searchers, so instead why not learn how they think and use that to gain their attention?

It’s not enough to just think like a searcher, however. You will still need to consider the marketer’s perspective, but if you are having difficulties reconciling the two, why not call some experts to help you get started?

915ITuser/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Logo-Wide.png915ITuser2016-05-26 11:30:112016-05-21 03:38:51How to Take Full Advantage of SEO in Four Easy Steps

When you’re dealing with a business, it’s not enough that it looks good on paper. Online businesses, for instance, want to drive more traffic to their website, which means using SEO to their advantage and being a friend to search engines. Search engines are different from humans, however. And since your clients are humans, you will have to consider what they want rather than just what the search engine wants.

This is why good graphics design is important.

A good graphics design catches the eye of someone you want to do business with. It should be well done, wisely placed, and can convey a good message without needing further explanation. Even without words, a good design would already say a lot about your company or the services you offer in El Paso. A website designed well, for instance, can speak of how professional you look. If you were asked to choose between two websites, one with misaligned columns and information not readily available in a few clicks and another with a helpful sidebar and a good navigation system that lets you go where you want to go without hassle, which would you choose?

You’d go with the more organized one. That is the same thing that your clients would do when comparing your offering with a competitor’s. They would assess you first based on how well you look and then see the information that you have to offer. And then, finally, they would decide whether you are the one they are looking for. You wouldn’t reach this step if you have already failed in getting their attention because of bad graphic design.

To get that good first impression, you can employ the help of professional graphic designers to ensure that you are not driving customers away. Instead, use good graphics design to drive more people in and gain more money.

915ITuser/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Logo-Wide.png915ITuser2016-05-24 18:30:592016-05-21 03:38:19WHY GOOD GRAPHIC DESIGN IS OF IMPORTANCE

Social media marketing has plenty of benefits. It can help get your brand recognized, build a more loyal following, and encourage customers to come back to your products and services. However, having an account on social media doesn’t automatically translate to success in this kind of marketing, especially when some social media sites have a word limit to abide by.

So how do you make the most of social media marketing? There are three strategies to keep in mind:

Time your posts – A well-timed post can do better than several posts at random. This is why it is important to publish tweets, send emails, or update your Facebook status on the times when your audience is not busy. Your aim is to catch their attention while they are checking their news feed, preferably when they are more eager to click on links. There are a few minutes before or after an hour that has professionals glancing at their phones checking on what’s happening. You may also post on social media late in the afternoon or early in the evening while your audience is probably stuck in traffic on the commute home or enjoying a relaxing dinner. Posting on the weekends also generate more click-through activity. Does this mean you have to work on the weekends? No. You could use scheduling tools like Buffer and HootSuite for this.

Use calls to action – Encourage your audience to do something about your post. A simple question added at the end of a post actually generates higher comment rates as opposed to a question placed anywhere else in the body. A photo should also be accompanied by something that makes the audience participate, like having them caption the photo or have a sentence about it be filled in by them. Promotions should also use catchy words like “winner,” “giveaway,” and “win” instead of “clearance,” “coupon,” and even “% off.” Giving people the motivation to follow you also works; provide prizes for when they do, and if not, give them behind-the-scenes and exclusive access.

Take advantage of images – Images are your friends. They work better than videos, links, and texts when getting likes, comments, and click-throughs. However, you need to provide informative photos instead of just random stock images. Infographics and charts not needing explanation work better than photos needing caption.

It would require some effort and time to get social media marketing to work for you, but with a little bit of strategic thinking, you can make it work wonders. Just remember, before posting anything, make sure that you have your audience in mind. Ask yourself what they are doing, what would capture their interest, and how you could have them participate. Engaging your audience makes sure that they enjoy their stay and soon you’ll have plenty of new and repeat audiences, which in turn churns more revenue.

915ITuser/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Logo-Wide.png915ITuser2016-05-22 18:23:272016-05-21 03:37:53EFFECTIVE SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING IN THREE EASY STEPS

Email marketing is a strategy that is easy to deploy, but most people do not think that something so easy could be so productive. And yet email marketing proves that it is. It provides plenty of advantages for someone aiming to gain more income from their business in El Paso, regardless of the size of that business.

Introduce New Products or Services to Clients

Consider this. Anyone interested in your product or service fills up a subscriber’s form including their email, and you are free to send them emails about updates and services you have that might interest them. It doesn’t sound complicated, and the entire premise of email marketing is based on that. However, it isn’t just that you are sending them emails. With a well-written and engaging email, you can introduce new products to them and get them to act, whether it’s to buy or visit a page you are linking to.

High Return of Investment

It’s not just that you are sending thousands of emails to people who might be remotely interested in your product. You are carefully choosing the ones that will be interested and have the potential to give you income. You may even filter by location if you only want those who live in El Paso. Email marketing has proven to have a high return of investment in a short time because the people you are marketing your products or services to have already shown their interest. As long as your email remains informative and enticing, and has a strategically placed call to action, you can earn instant profit.

Quick Results

People who are interested in what you have to offer have an impulse to get what they want in the most convenient way possible—and what better way to offer them that than by providing them with a helpful link to finish the transaction?

Wherever you are, email marketing can work for you. However, this isn’t to say that you should start sending emails all at once without making sure that you are being efficient in the words that you use. Make sure you build interest and let your clients know that there is something in store for them, and that they will be interested in it. Tell them the advantages of your products or services and give them an easy way to start using that advantage. And if they know other people who might also be interested, you’d gain more if they share the email.

As long as you use email marketing properly and wisely, you will get good profit from it.

About Us

915IT strives to bring you the utmost quality when it comes to value of your dollar. We will always stand by our work, unlike the other guys. Our goal is to make you happy as our customer so that in turn you can make your customers happy by providing the information they need to find and interact with your business.